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Saturday, November 16, 2013

Protecting Wolves by Throwing Them to the Wolves?

Yesterday I wrote about
Opening Day for Michigan’s deer hunting season. But yesterday was also
opening day for a hunting season not seen in Michigan for almost 50
years. Despite pushback from many different organizations,
and petitions set up on a whole lot of petition sites, our grand
Poobahs in Pure Michigan caved once again to special interests and
instituted a hunting season for wolves.

Yes, wolves.

There was a time not so long ago (pre-1965) that our wolf population
was zero, and we didn’t like that. Other states had wolves; why didn’t
we? So in 1965 we gave wolves legal protection in our state. How we got
the word out to the wolves, I don’t know, but over the years a few of
them began to straggle in.

In 1974, after only six confirmed sightings in nearly a decade, we
decided something had to be done. Four wolves were captured in
wolf-heavy Minnesota and plunked down in the Huron Mountains in the
Upper Peninsula. Within eight months they had all been killed. (Nobody
‘fessed up. Surprise.) None of them reproduced. (See Gray Wolf timeline here.)

Sadness at the DNR. They wanted a wolf population in the U.P. With
the help of the Michigan Wildlife Fund (See below) and other
protections, including habitat enhancements, wolves finally began to
appear in greater numbers.

The population expanded (Woo Hoo!), but with the expansion came more
and more incidences of predation. The wolves were killing livestock and
pets and were spotted too close for comfort near human population
centers. Once their numbers grew to more than 400 the DNR began to see
them as a liability and not an asset.

Could there have been any other outcome? The Upper Peninsula isn’t a
zoo or a preserve. Wolves will be wolves. But this was excellent news
for the hunting interests out there salivating, hoping against hope
that wolf numbers would continue to explode and that Canis lupus would keep that wolfish behavior going.

“I’m an avid hunter, so this is an opportunity that doesn’t come
along very often,” he said today. “It may be the last hunt, too, if the
environmentalists get their way.”

As hunters excitedly prepared for the hunt this afternoon, the mood
was far more somber about 300 miles to the south in Mt. Pleasant, where
the Saginaw Chippewa Tribe planned a candlelight vigil for the animal so
iconic in their tribal heritage.

“The gray wolf is significant to our culture,” said tribal spokesman
Frank Cloutier. “It’s a part of our creation story, very significant to
who we are and what we believe.”

The hunt calls for a maximum of 43 wolves to be harvested in three
designated zones of the Upper Peninsula. It is slated to run from dawn
Friday through Dec. 31 or whenever the target number is reached.
Michigan has sold 1,200 licenses for the hunt.

Ah, there it is: Twelve hundred licenses sold when a mere 43 wolves
can be killed. ($100 for residents; $500 for non-residents)

It’s not
about culling predators (which wolves most certainly are, but they knew
that in the 1970s when they were encouraging the population.) Farmers
and homeowners already have the right to shoot predators, including
wolves, on their property.

For the state, it’s all about giving hunters a new sport. It’s all
about the money. Not only the uptick in license fees, but in years
ahead the kill limit will increase and Michigan will benefit as one of
only a handful of Midwestern states allowing wolf hunting. The economic
run-off could be big.

In Michigan we can pay extra for license plates that will aid our
favorite organizations. We have one with a picture of a loon, for
example, that aids the Michigan Non-game Wildlife Fund. We can also
check off a box for the same fund on our Michigan Income Tax forms.
From the MWF page:

Since 1983, over $10 million has been raised for these
important management efforts through voluntary check-off contributions
on the state income tax form, sales of specialty license plates, and by
direct donations. Six million of that $10 [million] dollars has been
placed in a permanent trust, and interest from that trust will continue
to support threatened and endangered species well into the future.

The Nongame Fish and Wildlife Fund is responsible for:

restoring Trumpeter swans to their historic wetland areas;

reintroducing the Peregrine falcon;

implementing the Michigan Frog and Toad Survey;

helping the wolf population through monitoring and education;

establishing over 120 watchable wildlife viewing sites;

relocating osprey to expand their range in Michigan;

surveying abandoned mines to protect bat wintering sites;

identifying rare plant sites; and

So now that they’ve decided our once threatened and endangered wolves
are out of the woods, where will the wolf money go? Will the DNR keep
“helping” the wolf population they so purposefully worked to expand, now
that the crew in Lansing has caved to the hunting special interests and
reclassified the wolf as fair game?

Note, too, that not a single dollar of the money going toward wolf
protection came from hunters’ license fees, even though they’re the ones
who’ll now benefit from all that TLC. The general population donated
all of it, thinking it would actually go toward protection and
education. Nobody ever mentioned wolf-hunting.

John Barnes at MLive quotes Bob Graves,
one of the Upper Peninsula hunters yesterday (My emphasis below,
because, yes, they really say this crap out loud. I’ve heard it, or
something like it, more times than I care to count):

“Yes, I’ll take the pelt, but that’s not why. It’s not
(being) here to put a trophy on the wall, it’s to experience the
outdoors, and to hunt a majestic animal, a beautiful animal.”
There is another reason too, adds [Mark] Bird, 62[, of Kent City].
“This might be Michigan’s only wolf hunt. It might be just once in a
lifetime opportunity.”

So that’s it. There’s talk of putting the issue on the ballot in
2014, but, even with enough signatures, and even with an iron-clad “no”
vote, there’s no guarantee our current Koch-based administration won’t
just ignore the will of the people. They’ve done it before.

As of this writing, three wolves have been taken. The DNR keeps track and so can we.

________________

In those days we had never heard of passing up a chance
to kill a wolf. In a second we were pumping lead into the pack, but
with more excitement than accuracy; how to aim a steep hill shot is
always confusing. when our rifles were empty, the old wolf was down, and
a pup was dragging a leg into impassable slide rocks.

We reached
the old wolf in time to watch a fierce green fire dying in her eyes. I
realized then, and have known ever since, that there was something new
to me in those eyes-- something known only to her and the mountain. I
was young then, full of trigger itch; I thought that because fewer
wolves meant more deer, that no wolves would mean hunters paradise. But
after seeing the green fire die, I sensed that neither the wolf nor the
mountain agreed with such a view.

Aldo Leopold, A Sand County Almanac

________________________________

NOTE: A big Thank You to Chris Savage at Eclectablog for choosing this post as a Guest Post for his website today. Check it out!

6 comments:

As far as I can tell where we live in the western U.P., the big complaint about the wolves is that they're making deer hunting more difficult. Hunters complain there are fewer deer, which is nonsense. What has changed is deer behavior. The increasing numbers of wolves are having the same effect on the deer in the U.P. that wolves in Yellowstone NP had on elk: the presence of a year-round predator has changed prey behavior. The deer are warier, they no longer hang out for hours by bait piles, they tend to be in almost constant movement. Ergo, hunters have to work harder to get some venison.

We have a wolf pack that circles through or near our 40 acres of brush and swamp on a regular basis. I have never seen them, although I'm sure they're around. My daughter tells me the pack includes at least one white wolf, which I think would be kind of cool to see. Quite a few of my acquaintances in L'Anse are vehemently anti-wolf, usually because a friend of a friend supposedly had a dog eaten by wolves. They're all convinced toddlers will be next on the canis lupus menu. Well, that's only going to happen if they treat their kids the same way they treated the dogs: tethered on a cable lead in the back yard and ignored most of the time.

As for the DNR contradicting itself, sort of, by collecting money to help the wolves and at the same time selling licenses to kill them, that's totally typical. They've been hoping for 20+ years now to get the moose population up to the point where people can shoot them. In fact, I seem to recall that one reason for introducing wolves was to help thin the deer herd to make conditions better for the moose.

Nancy, thanks so much for weighing in. Good to get the perspective from someone who lives among the wolves! I hope you get a chance to see the albino wolf. That would be a once-in-a-lifetime thrill.

You're so right that the DNR is not always wildlife's BFF. Their allegiances are with the moneymakers, probably because they're always living on the edge of their ever-declining budgets. We really should have a state agency just for the protection of wildlife, and if they need an agency to keep the hunters and fishermen happy, go for it.

Wolves were classified as non-game for a reason: You can't eat them. Treating them as predators is far different from killing them for sport. I didn't mention in my piece that most of the claims against the wolves have been exposed as either exaggerations or outright lies.

You said you know there is a pack nearby but have never seen them. That seems to be the norm. People are rarely bothered by wolves. They don't need to scavenge near towns--they can get enough to eat in the wild. As long as humans leave them alone, that is.

And your assessment of the deer becoming more wary when wolves are around, thus no longer becoming sitting targets for "hunters"--spot on.

Makes me crazy, I always want to beat myself unconscious when the alleged "sports" hunter has to kill something he won't eat to prove how "majestic" it is. Good gods and goblins, just go buy a compensatory humongo truck like every other inadequately endowed male and be done with it.

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